AR Defender 2 is a multiplayer tower defense game with Augmented Reality capability!

Ready for battle?!...

As the title suggests, AR Defender 2 is basically a tower-defense game with a twist: Using the camera of your iDevice, you can bring the action of the game into your surroundings. However, this doesn’t do much to affect the gameplay, and while a neat flourish to set it apart from other games of the genre, the need to print out or create your own AR tag can make the feature a bit of a hassle.

At the same time, one can only imagine what could be done with a sufficiently large enough AR tag and just the right camera angle, similar to what some people have done with the AR reader on the Nintendo 3DS. Though this is one mad science experiment we’ve not been able to partake in, feel free to let us know if you decide to try it!

Why not give me the tower for free? C’mon, be a pal!

As for the game itself, it can be played without the AR feature, and is a basic tower defense game, albeit with a more three-dimensional aspect as enemies come from all sides to destroy your generator in the center. You use coins to strategically put up various defense towers in different parts of the map, and though you’re only allowed four at one time, you can upgrade or combine different types of tower components.

Unfortunately, the game feels a little limited in some ways as you need to unlock a lot of the arsenal or the various heroes, who require lots of the rather rare gems to purchase. This can make the early going feel tedious as the variety can be a little bit lacking. Your efforts are further hindered by a somewhat iffy touch interface where collecting coins is concerned; sometimes they are gathered without any problem, but during ‘coin frenzies’ after each round, they seem more difficult to pick up.

“Stoppit, you punks! This is my house!”

AR Defender 2 isn’t a bad game, but it takes patience to peel back the layers and get to the meatier bits of game. It also seems to have some persistent crashing problems, most notably when you click on the ‘Armory’ tab before a mission.

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